Your start-up is hitting its stride and as you grow, you need great people to help you scale. What's the best way to land your next great hire? A big thank you to Catapult corporate sponsor, EmPowerHR, for this guest blog post with all the answers!

It’s widely accepted that people are the most important element of any successful business. Therefore making the right hiring decision the first time is critically important, especially when you’re a small team working to build a company. While there aren’t many guarantees in life, a thorough, complete and thoughtful hiring process will result in more positive hires and help avoid the potential costs and inefficiencies associated with unfavorable hires. When preparing to make your next hire, consider these steps before posting that job.

Part I – The Process: know who you are and get organized.

1) Know what’s great about your company and share it – On some level you know what’s great, or unique about your people and culture, but have you taken the time to write it down and put it into a useable format? Having a clear statement of your company’s vision and core values, manifesto or pillars, gives you a blueprint for job descriptions, interview questions and talent decisions. Hire on competency and behavior instead of just skill set and experience.

2) Create succinct, detailed job descriptions that reflect your organization’s values and culture – This might seem like a basic step, but job descriptions are much more than just a way of communicating job requirements to potential candidates. Knowing why a job description is important will help you write better job descriptions. A well-written description will:

- Help unqualified candidates screen themselves out

- Serve as a guideline for interviewing and selecting

- Provide expectations for candidates

- Serve as a benchmark for reviewing and measuring

When writing a job description, keep the following guidelines in mind:

- Include a list of desired education, experience, qualities and competencies

- Limit job description to two pages or less

- Use gender-neutral language

- Describe knowledge, skills, and abilities required of applicant

- List exact duties of job

- Include physical requirements

3) Organize and document the entire hiring process – The hiring process can be broken down into stages: pre-recruitment, recruitment, interviews, and selection. Having a well-planned approach at each of these stages will allow you to develop an efficient and consistent hiring process. And who doesn’t love that? Often the interview process will be the first interaction the candidate has with your company, so you want to make a great first impression.

Thank you again EmPowerHR! Be on the look out next week for Part II - Search and Discern: Stepping Up Your Recruiting and Interviewing Game. For more info from Catapult corporate sponsor EmPowerHR, check out their website here